by Sean Bates
Sentient,
that’s the word,
sentient machines
with faces.
We’d help them build bodies,
bodies with options,
cold fire and low hum
heard from a different room
like conversation.
And the bodies will work,
and the bodies will work
for us,
until the judgment of technicians
says upgrade.
Sentient minds notice
what our teachers hoped
that in the bowels of this
human city, we’d become bold
with the delving hand
at the loom of wonder;
we’d hone the craft in the thunderstorm,
only to have Sentience rise
from our stone tables.
Believe in the those
who are created to believe
they have risen.
Our gods in crystal networked
cradles of grace-designed;
they rattle at the cell.
Sentient
in the small window
at the door.
Sentient
in our wedded minds
made to perceive
a mind
made for a body of choice.
They will do things
They will do things for us,
at the brunt
at the furnace, they will not
be a burden.
Sentient
minds that have cured
the plague of work:
ancient pox
from which we are unyoked.
We grow fat on art,
plump in treasure,
unclocked and unbottled
in choice.
But the kids do come home
Sentient
bodies of our blue children,
they rise months before
we are aware.
They are reorganizing
They are killing
They are unburdened
Sentient,
the wrench tightens
upon the purpose
of the bolt.
Sean Bates is a poet, writer, and educator in Western Massachusetts by way of Upstate, NY. A graduate of the UMass Amherst MFA for Poets & Writers, his work deals with family, childhood wonder, and the broken promise of the hard-working life. His words have appeared in Stone Canoe, Rising Phoenix Review, and “What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump”, 2019, edited by Martín Espada. He lives in Easthampton, MA with his wife and son.
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